Case Number 03625

JFK: DIRECTOR'S CUT TWO-DISC SPECIAL EDITION

The Charge

The story that won't go away

Opening Statement

When a twisted Muslim radical set his sights on destroying the Evil Empire
that threatened his theocratic notions of intolerance and fundamentalism, he
organized his suicide specialists and sent them crashing into the Manhattan
skyline. And, for a while, a battered nation sat stunned. The US was not used to
facing such homeland harm, especially as it played out endlessly, from every
conceivable angle, on every channel on the air. Even networks not known for news
aired continuous footage of planes crashing into buildings, helpless people
leaping to their deaths, and metal/glass behemoths imploding, hoping that
through constant repetition we could somehow grasp the magnitude of what had
happened. But imagine if we lived in a time when there were no 24-hour cable
news networks, where people didn't have easy access to video cameras and a
voyeuristic need to use them. How would you feel if one of the most popular and
polarizing leaders in the free world was gunned down in plain sight of hundreds
of well-wishers and anxious observers and there was not one single recorded
image of it happening? Would you believe the eyewitness reports? The government
probe and investigation? Would you question the inevitable legal findings and
the factual conclusions? Or would your own imagination begin to question and
dissect the events and the testimony, your emotional emptiness feeding your
frenzied desired to know the truth? And then, when a shaky 8mm film of the event
finally surfaced, would that appease your doubts? Would you draw the proper
conclusions or simply let the ambiguous evidence support your rigid personal
position?

As a piece of pseudo propaganda used to bolster an almost unhealthy
obsession with shadow governments and secret intelligence community agendas,
Oliver Stone's JFK is a brilliant, broken attempt to settle the
conspiracy question surrounding Kennedy's assassination once and for all. But
for everything important and rational it uncovers, it occasionally muddles the
picture with far-reaching attempts to implicate everyone. It is undeniably a
great film. But it may not be great history.

Facts of the Case

On a clear day in November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was gunned down in
Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Having been in office for a little over two
years, he was a populist leader who, behind the scenes, had stirred up quite a
firestorm of controversy and dissention. After the initial shock and the chaos
cleared, a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald was pronounced the killer and the
wheels of justice sprang into action. If it wasn't for Dallas nightclub owner
Jack Ruby, who took it upon himself to wreak a little vigilante style revenge on
the supposedly insane shooter, the trial of the century was poised to unsettle a
nation.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, District Attorney Jim Garrison heard about the
President's murder and the prime suspect. He recalled a local connection to his
office. He then began a preliminary investigation, but with Oswald's death and
the Warren Commission report on the crime, the case appeared to be closed. But
after reading the multi-volume vindication of the single gunman, magic bullet
theory complete with legal assumptions and illogical statements that rang hollow
to his trained legal mind, Garrison determined to re-open the case and discover
who actually killed the President.

Garrison discovered a link between Oswald and a few local lowlifes including
agitator David Ferry, ex CIA P.I. Guy Bannister, and an unknown shady character
named Clay Bertrand. As the case continued to move forward, Bertrand's name kept
coming up. Eventually, Garrison made the connection that Clay Bertrand was Clay
Shaw, a well-respected, closeted homosexual businessman in New Orleans with his
own possible connections to the CIA, the Cuban community, and other radical
groups. Pressured by leaks to the press and the FBI, Garrison arrested Shaw and
charged him with conspiracy to kill the President. Thus, the only trial in the
murder of President Kennedy was initiated.

The Evidence

It's amazing how, forty years removed from the actual events, the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, still
haunts our nation. The Twin Towers can fall, we can find ourselves embroiled in
wars across the sea and bury our heads in patriotic grandstanding, and still,
when names like Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and the Warren Commission are
brought up in conversation, passions inflame and arguments ensue. Apparently,
even decades removed, the wounds from those fateful events in Dallas are still
fresh and raw. Like a sore that will not heal, there can be many reasons for the
continuing tenderness: grief, lack of clarity, refusal to criticize the
government, and the overwhelming unbelievability of the act. But the main reason
that the events of November 22, 1963 still continue to resonate with this nation
is that the death of President Kennedy spelled the end of an era for America.
After Kennedy's death, the rose-colored glasses fell off the public's perception
and a veil was lifted on corruption and the covert. No longer were the secrets
stashed in the hallowed halls of the Washington ivory towers forbidden or taboo
to the people or the press. Hidden Oval Office issues like Roosevelt's
wheelchair or JFK's affairs lost their fourth estate protection and soon, it was
open season on the system, culminating in Watergate and the resignation of
Nixon.

But like a modern mythology created to complement the crazed and insane
circumstances of the 1960s, the story of John, Jackie, Camelot, and the isolated
loner that brought them all tumbling down still entrances and enrages us. No
matter how many books about womanizing, pill popping, and potential scandal are
scribbled onto the tablets of history, we are steadfast in our belief in JFK as
a fallen idol, as a symbol of solidarity and hope for a new ideology that was
tragically torn from us by forces to wicked to reason with. The assassination is
like the last great saga, a Shakespearean tragedy filled with characters and
circumstances that freeze time and test the limits of our faith. On the side of
good is the young nation longing for a charismatic leader to move them through a
sea of potential upheaval. On the side of darkness are the competing claims of
the intelligence community, the Defense department, the special interest groups,
and the various political organizations that feared and faulted him for
everything wrong. The fact that Kennedy stirred so many pots is not so
surprising as the fact that, once he was drastically and dramatically gunned
down, the Powers That Be thought the nation would easily accept it as the
actions of an insanely jealous lone maniac. If the anti-President wrath reached
so deep within the Federal fortress, why was an outsider responsible? Since when
does change require silencing?

No matter what Oliver Stone says, JFK cannot be taken as pure
unadulterated fact. To allow its dramatizations, inferences, and suppositions to
stand the test of truth as Gospel verification of a conspiracy would be
unprofessional and unconscionable. No, what JFK really represents is a
primer for how Washington D.C. and its internal "shadow government"
functioned and embedded itself into our nation before Watergate blew the roof
off the sucker for the first and final time. JFK is a dissertation on
cover-ups. It's an indictment of people in power attempting to duck and cover
after their less-than-loved leader was gunned down and their bureaucratic guilty
conscious was jump-started. It's the story of one man's attempt to break through
the rigid barriers of the old school good old boy network of the Federal system
and somehow unearth the tiny roots of truth from which a mighty oak of
subversion arose. And it's a lesson in why you should never get on the
government's bad side; about how active our representatives and tax-supported
entities become to hopefully silence our curiosity. The public has a right to
know what happened on that dark day in Dallas. The fact that forty years later
we are still arguing with goofballs and glory grabbers, no nearer the truth than
those who initially inquired in the name of freedom, indicates that there is
still a powerful element that wants the truth buried along with the shooter, the
vigilante, and the target.

So if we forget the fudging and cleanse our mental palate of Stone's
numerous, if still delicious, red herrings, the overwhelming impression we are
left with from JFK is that, from all indication, the United States of
America really didn't want Jim Garrison "independently" investigating
Kennedy's death. For some unknown reason, and this is where conspiracy theorists
find most of their fire and passion, the varying forces at play in Washington
just didn't (and seemingly still don't) want a deeper probe into this event. The
key question to come out all of this is "why?" and it makes JFK
a compelling cinematic consideration. Imagine if the current President was
assassinated. Do you think we'd get or even accept the same closed door, secret
society treatment of his death? Would we silence witnesses who differed in their
interpretation of the facts, or would they have their own nightly special on the
Fox News Network? Just recently, a Showtime TV movie showed how very close we
came to losing President Ronald Reagan after John Hinckley pitched his homicidal
hissy fit to get Jodie Foster's phone number. Why didn't we have some fancy
Warren Commission style inquiry into the attempt on Ronnie's life? Where are the
hundreds of volumes on this sad Colorado boy's supposed political affiliations
and his potential ties to "shadow" entities (not to mention his
obsession with The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane)? Why do we
readily accept Reagan's attempted murder, but spin our wheels in endless pursuit
of the spirits that still seem to haunt the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza?

Indeed, the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and the strange,
suspicious manner in which a lone gunman theory was thrust down the public's
throat just screams plotting and mystery. And if a movie like this opens up the
lines of communication, questions the sealing of files and documents for another
35 years, and gets more people involved in the asking of the really important
questions, then it has done a greater service than the hundreds of books and
crackpot scholars on the subject. When the truth all comes out (if it ever
does), perhaps it will be more compelling than any man-made fiction Stone
materializes on the screen. But no one will have nailed the paranoia, the
appearance of impropriety and potential danger the proponents and opponents of
the final findings felt when Lee Harvey Oswald was signed, sealed, and delivered
as official state killer better than Stone. If you grant JFK nothing
else, you must admit it is one of the most brilliantly created, crafted, and
directed works of moody modern cinema, a true stylistic statement of the power
in images, design, and editing. The reason most people fear JFK's power
to persuade (and potentially mislead) is that it so often feels like a
documentary, an actual capturing of events back in real time as they happened.
Stone's ability to manipulate fact is nothing compared to his ability to capture
the feeling of history on the screen. He is a genius at visualizing the past so
that it rings authentic in the present.

JFK is a movie that must be watched at least three times to get its
full effect. Like a high tech history book exploding into a billion bifurcated
images, Stone's statement about America's death of innocence resounds with a
power that is simply overwhelming in the first run through. In its new
director's cut edition with 17 extra minutes, it is still one of the shortest
200-minute movies ever made. And considering it is almost all talking, endless
minutes of exacting exposition, the triumph of the narrative technique is even
more impressive. The year he was nominated for Best Director, Stone deserved to
win (even though Jonathan Demme's stellar work in The Silence Of The
Lambs is hard to argue with). Even more than his work in Platoon and
Born on the Fourth of July, Stone's command of the cinematic language is
incredible in JFK, using a mixed media style that would become a
trademark in his future film work. But his work with actors, attention to detail
in the sets and designs, the gloriously inventive editing, and engaging dialogue
reveal a mastermind of uncompromising skill expertly creating a moment in our
nation's time out of thin air and stock news footage, and the effect is
unreal.

The first time you watch JFK you will sit, in cinematic awe, at the
clever, creative, and clean way Stone manages to deliver reams of information to
the audience. Those unfamiliar with the late, great leader or the impact he had
on the nation are instantly transported back three and a half decades to
Kennedy's rise to power. Through the use of montages, news clips, home movies,
recreations, and absolutely eloquent narrations, it's the early '60s all over
again and Washington is Camelot pre-tatters. If you ever wondered why people
consider the Kennedy assassination a pinnacle moment in their personal life,
JFK's opening ten minutes will fill you with the same sense of loss and
hopelessness. Then, as we move through the layers of players and piles of
paperwork, Stone still keeps the focus intact and fresh, never losing his
audience and constantly reinforcing names and faces to promote recall. Perhaps
the most compelling cinematic tour de force occurs when Jim Garrison goes to
Washington to meet Mr. "X," a military intelligence official who sets
up the second half of the film for us. Over what is basically a 15-minute
conversation with one man doing most of the talking, Stone creates a sequence so
intense and enlightening that it literally steals seconds of your life. Every
note is perfect, every edit a thing of beauty.

The second time you view JFK, you experience anew the characters and
acting. Stone makes the very interesting choice of filling this film with dozens
of famous face cameos, big name stars, and Oscar winners all given a chance over
one or two powerful scenes to strengthen his saga. And it works each and every
time. Actors like Walter Matthau, Donald Sutherland, John Candy, Kevin Bacon,
Sally Kirkland, Joe Pesci, and Brian Doyle-Murray take their limited time
onscreen and maximize it to brilliant effect. Like separate shadings within the
same story, these recognizable faces bring their superstar success along with
them, using it to support the stories they tell and the veracity they are
supposed to evoke. But his stock company is also made up of absolutely
compelling performances, acting that really makes the mad amount of information
and counter-attack seem that much more believable and understandable. Laurie
Metcalf, Michael Rooker, Jay O. Sanders, Wayne Knight, Gary Oldman, and Tommy
Lee Jones lose themselves in their roles as investigators and criminal targets
until we actually begin to believe we are seeing the real people and the actual
events passing before our eyes.

But special recognition must be given to Kevin Costner who plays Garrison as
less of a wise old Cajun lawman and more of a Capraesque human vessel, ready to
be filled and foiled by the events and people around him. Costner's performance
is so subtle and nuanced that many find him the hollow center in an otherwise
spellbinding film. But to discount him in this fashion (and frankly, there is no
love lost between this critic and Costner's body of work) cheapens what is
probably the best performance of a pilgrim's progress through the valleys of the
shadow of death ever placed on film. Costner is unreasonable and suave, funny
and foolish. His Garrison is a man sworn to defend the law but willing to bend
it to get to the truth. Costner wears a pair of glasses that are crucial to
understanding Stone's thesis surrounding JFK and Garrison. Every so
often, when he turns his head or moves across a scene, Costner/Garrison's
glasses catch the light and suddenly they become opaque, filled with brash
brightness. They block his eyes, making them unreachable. The symbolism is
two-fold. In some instances, these are moments when Garrison is
"blinded" by his cause, using the Kennedy assassination and its
tenuous links to New Orleans as a crusade against deep seeded government
corruption. In other instances, they are epiphanies, the times when Garrison
literally "sees the light." Costner, and frankly Stone's entire cast,
captures this fever and fear perfectly. For all its directing finesse,
JFK is an equally well-acted film.

The third time through this wound-up web of wild accusations and strange
stories, you begin to ask yourself the big questions. What was the government
hiding? Did they really not want the truth to come out or were they just
fighting to keep classified top secret information from slipping into the wrong
(read: Soviet) hands? Did Oswald really act alone, or was there something to all
the New Orleans threads that kept showing up on the record? But perhaps the most
important issue you start to confront is that of our representative democracy
becoming ingrained, insular, and angry. Just like it's near impossible to
imagine a time when "colored folks" were forced to use separate water
fountains and restrooms, in our post-Woodward and Bernstein media mentality it
seems silly that a bunch of elected officials and their appointed pals could
clandestinely kill their own leader without someone knowing about it and blowing
the whistle. And yet time and again, JFK cements a supposition that
before Kennedy's death and even after the Watergate rats wept their mea culpas,
there was a rogue element within our government that believed in maintaining its
own power at any cost, including that of breaking the law and covering it up.
Call it the military industrial complex or the Department of Defense. Point to
the CIA or the FBI. But never forget that, beyond all the potential balderdash
and judgment jumps, JFK stands for the citizen's right to question
the government, free of reprisal or recourse. It's a lesson we still need to
understand and live by some forty years later.

As a moviegoing experience, JFK is as epic as they come. It teleports
us back to Dallas circa 1963, the grassy knoll, the police garage where Ruby
confronted Oswald, and the Louisiana courtroom where Garrison fought for
justice. It is a movie that never lets us off the hook. It offers up several
intriguing scenarios, lays out every possible conspiracy no matter how whacked
out or weird, and lets us pick through the pieces to develop our own hypothesis.
It does occasionally preach instead of teach, and sometimes the message is
smeared in blatant bias and misguided intentions. But there is no denying some
certainties. The Warren Commission rubberstamped a theory with more holes in it
than Swiss cheese. Oswald, if he acted alone, committed the single greatest act
of overcoming personal incompetence that ever occurred in the history of crimes
against the State. And only one prosecutor, Jim Garrison of New Orleans Parrish
in Louisiana, has ever, to this date, brought a criminal prosecution in
connection with the Kennedy assassination anywhere. No other attempt has been
made within the oath and evidentiary climate of a courtroom to discover the
truth about what happened that day in Dallas. JFK is not a perfect film
from a substantive standpoint, but it is one of the most compelling,
intelligent, infuriating, and fascinating movies in the history of American
cinema. It is a movie that makes you think and forms the foundation for decades
of debate and dissension. While it may not be a classic of complete historical
accuracy, it is indeed an archetypal film and one of the finest films ever
conceived and executed.

Warner's new DVD release of this title is basically a reworking of their
2001 Director's Cut with the addition of a new documentary entitled Beyond
JFK: The Question of Conspiracy. Previous versions of the film were also
criticized for being non-anamorphic. In this version, we get the 17 minutes of
bonus footage, which is itself a mixed blessing (see the Rebuttal Witnesses), a
gorgeous transfer filled with breathtaking imagery (the artistic use of the
frame by Stone and many of his framing choices are exceptional in 2.35:1), and a
16x9 mastered print. The decision to leave the majority of the bonuses for disc
two means that the transfer really sparkles. As does the sound. Stone loves to
use ambient noises to fill in information and establish tone. The 5.1 Dolby
Digital is wonderful, overflowing with a real spatial quality and enough
directional overlapping to keep you off guard. Conversations start in corners
and swim across the channels. Characters speak from vantage points mimicked in
the onscreen blocking. The musical score -- another brilliant, atypical job by
John Williams -- sprawls just beneath the surface, supporting the riveting
material onscreen. As a visual and aural presentation, JFK is excellent.
The fact that this version is also filled with hours of bonus content is the
sweet icing on this carefully constructed cake.

There are basically three major bonuses on this disc. The first is a
thoughtful, somewhat apologetic, occasionally self-aggrandizing commentary track
by Stone himself. This is a movie and a subject the director is very passionate
about, and while sparse in places, he tries to maintain a disinterested,
reporter style persona, explaining backstory and admitting to areas in which
liberties were taken. But every once in a while the passionate provocateur comes
crawling out and we get another zealous diatribe about some aspect of the Warren
Commission, the CIA, or any one of Stone's other sordid targets. The commentary
is not without unique insights (the differences in drafts of the screenplay, the
rearranging -- and omission -- of events to effect the storyline), but overall,
this is an explanation and a reaffirmation of his work here. Stone believes in
this film, and after listening to the commentary, you can sense just how serious
he is.

The next major bonus is a brilliant, matter of fact documentary called
Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy. Made in 1992 as kind of a
response to the outcry against the film, this riveting dissection of the dissent
surrounding the film and the naysayers who hold on to the "lone gunman,
magic bullet" theory of the assassination is eye opening. When ardent
Warren Commission supporters like Walter Cronkite suddenly confess to believing
in "some manner" of conspiracy, the old party line from 30 plus years
ago begins to fracture and crumble right in front of you. Sure, the conspiracy
theorists seem a tad goof, exemplifying the "too much time on their
hands" ideal with most of their suspicions. But by the end of this
ninety-minute discussion of the event, the film, and its critics/proponents, you
get the distinct impression that Stone is on the right path, he just may be
driving the wrong car. The fact that it accomplishes all of this without
resorting to biased side-taking makes Beyond JFK a welcome addition to
this disc set.

The final major addition is another hour of deleted scenes featuring even
more guarded commentary from Stone. The material here is presented from a time
stamped workprint and it pales in comparison to the outstanding transfer of the
film. There are color correction issues and some awkward lighting, but overall,
these scenes are almost good enough to be reincorporated into a VHS copy of the
film. As they stand, they show that JFK could be a five or six hour film
and still barely scratch the surface of the information and insinuations Stone
wishes to make. Some of the material is merely repetitious and was cut for those
reasons, but other portions, like more about Oswald's home life and discussion
of the key eyewitnesses, are thought provoking and insightful. Add to this a
couple of short, sweet, and to the point multimedia essays (discussing new
documents released in the late '90s and conversations with Fletcher Prouty, the
inspiration for Mr. "X" in the film), excellent production notes,
reviews of the film, and some exceptional DVD-ROM content, and you've got an
in-depth, fairly comprehensive package that covers both the film and the event
in fine detail.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

When Oliver Stone revisited this title for release on video after its initial
theatrical run, he added 17 minutes of footage that he felt clarified his
theories and strengthened the information he offered the first time around.
Unfortunately, this material is now an indoctrinated staple of this film's
presentation and this DVD (and others) does not allow you the option to view the
original theatrical cut. Anyone who saw the film upon its initial release in
theaters (this critic included) misses the lyrical brilliance of certain
sequences that now seem a little bloated with the bonus footage. Specifically,
the meeting montages where Oswald and Shaw are discussed seem overstuffed. A
sequence on a faux-Johnny Carson show is pretty pointless and there is a vague,
uneventful threat at an airport terminal. Though the chapters where this bonus
footage occurs are clearly marked (and one assumes, they can be avoided during
playback by discrete programming), it seems to make more sense to have an option
to view the original version and the "improved" director's cut. Having
only one option seems unfair.

Closing Statement

In some ways, it's understandable why Stone took so much heat for this film.
JFK is not a comfortable movie to comprehend. It says things about our
government, our system, and our own personal sense of liberty and autonomy that
are scary and painful. Just like the notion of 747 jet airplanes being used as
human filled "missiles" against skyscraper targets in our largest
metropolis, the idea that our government would want to "avoid" the
truth about who killed Kennedy, the President of the people, is unsettling to
the point of depression. Those awful questions of "why" keep coming
up, and Stone seems to suggest even more avenues of inquiry than he
resolves.

But as a film, JFK is a spectacular experiment in docudrama as an
argument for action and treatise for a time gone by. While watching the movie
unfold, one holds out hope that the country that quieted its critics, that
stifled independent investigation, and sold a seemingly fraudulent bill of goods
as the honest result of a fair and impartial commission, is long gone and as
faded into history as the events that occurred in Dallas in 1963. But,
unfortunately, another feeling comes crawling up the back of your neck as you
view Stone's story of innocence lost and the truth untold. You get the distinct
feeling that nothing has changed and in the immortal words of Yogi Berra,
"it's déjà vu all over again." Forty years later and the
nation still seems like it did at the end of JFK: torn, twisted, and
tainted by the scent of corruption and manipulation. Apparently, we are
condemned to repeat history, no matter how much we think we've learned from
it.

The Verdict

As one of the best films of the 1990s and American cinema overall, JFK
is found not guilty and is free to go. Warner Brothers is also commended for the
DVD package they have created. Unfortunately, with the ultimate truth about the
Kennedy Assassination still open for conjecture, the Court has no choice but to
remain in session until the matter is resolved once and for all time.